FORT MYERS, Fla. — If the Twins do return to contention in a few years, they may owe it all to Ronald Reagan. Here’s why:

Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and said: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Mr. Gorbachev said OK, Ron, no problem, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

Americans then flooded the city, helping to reunite and rebuild it from the ashes of the Cold War. On Saturdays, the children of these Americans played baseball in the local parks. A young German boy, the son of two professional ballet dancers, took a fancy to the game and joined in. He became very good.

When he was 16, the Twins offered him $800,000 to sign a professional contract. And now the young man projects as a middle-of-the-order slugger with a sweet swing that is the talk of the organization. Say hello to Maximilian Kepler-Rozycki — that’s Max Kepler to you.

Thanks, Ronnie.

“My parents actually have a piece of the wall,” Max said. “That was the best time for baseball in Berlin because of all the Americans who came over to help out Germany.”

He was playing more for fun than anything else when scouts from major league teams first got wind of his ability. Max said he had never really thought about a career as a baseball player.

“I was just playing baseball because I loved the sport,” he said Wednesday, Feb. 27, after a workout at the Twins’ minor league complex. “One day I saw a bunch of guys in khaki pants carrying clipboards at the ballpark. People told me they were they were there for me.”

Side note: Twins farm director Brad Steil, standing a few feet away, was wearing khaki pants and carrying a clipboard.

“That’s when I got a sense that I’ve actually got a chance at this game,” Max said.

At the time, in his midteens, he was equally involved in soccer and tennis, which are considered more traditional sports in Germany, along with golf and ale drinking.

“My mind-set was pretty much focused on soccer,” he said. “I was a goalie for a pretty well-known Berlin team. Yeah, I don’t know; I just felt like baseball was the right thing to go with. I guess it paid off.”

Kepler, who just turned 20, is set to begin his fourth season in the Twins organization. A lefty all the way, he’s likely headed to Class A Cedar Rapids. At Elizabethton in 2012 he hit 10 homers, 16 doubles and 5 triples in 232 at-bats. He is 6 feet 4 and 220 pounds and runs well enough to play in the outfield as well as first base.

“Max has power,” said Steil. “He’s right on schedule.”

Well, he’s a well-rounded kid, knowledgeable in the arts, and his English is better than mine. His parents blessed him with great flexibility and coordination. Clearly, two ballet dancers are going to pass along excellent genes. And as the scouts say, you can’t teach genetics. Or something like that.

Max’s mother, Kathy Kepler, was born in Texas and studied at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York before moving to Berlin in 1984. There she met and married the already-famous dancer Marek Rozycki, who had defected to Germany from Poland. They sent Max to the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin and then to an athletics-oriented boarding school about five hours south.

“At the time in Germany, I was playing with the men’s team and stuff,” he said. “I was pretty advanced for my age. I played all around Europe, and I had great people that exposed me to the best baseball in Europe.”

Which, some would say, is like being exposed to the best Mexican food in Green Bay, Wis.

“My dad was really for me playing soccer, but they supported me in every way,” he said. “They didn’t know much about baseball in the beginning. But they sure do now. They’re loving it.”

Watching Kepler take batting practice, it becomes clear that he does not have that big, looping swing that produces a lot of strikeouts. Instead, it’s compact and quick. Which brings us to another good thing: Kepler shouldn’t have any trouble adjusting to the breaking ball — the death of many a young slugger. In fact, he faced a steady diet of them in Germany.

“Their specialty is the junkball because they don’t have too much velocity in Germany,” Max noted. “I don’t know why that is. They probably don’t start young enough. But, yeah, the fastest you’ll see is maybe 90. They just love throwing breaking balls down in and down away.”

His parents accompanied him to Fort Myers in 2010, his first season. He has a great appreciation for their athletic skills and what they passed on to him.

“I see ballet as an art,” Max said. “My mom retired right after she had my sister, but my dad was on the road a lot. I’d be backstage watching him dance at almost every performance back home. But I didn’t see myself doing it.”

As it turns out, Max grew so quickly that he might have had trouble finding proper tights.

“At 16, I just saw myself going to college and taking it from there,” he said. “In school, my good friends played soccer. At first they were like, ‘What is this guy doing? What is this sport? It’s not going to be worth anything in the future.’ Once I actually made it somewhere it was, like, ‘Wow, good choice.’ ”

You can never say for sure at his young age, but the Twins are very high on him.

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